It’s not very often in professional sports that a person gets a second chance at success.

There’s no redo after a missed shot. There’s no best two-out-of-three in an elimination game. But for Del Worsham, that rare opportunity at redemption gave way to a big win at the 35th annual Lucas Oil NHRA Nationals at Brainerd International Raceway.

“It felt like a mulligan. It was unreal,” said Worsham, who was winless in three previous finals this season. “It’s not often you get a chance to run two finals in two days. It felt like, alright, we’ve got a shot at this, let’s see what we can do.”

After failing to secure a victory on Saturday in the rain-delayed final from Seattle two weeks prior, Worsham went four rounds on Sunday and, this time, he didn’t let the opportunity go to waste.

Going up against No. 1 qualifier and new national record holder Matt Hagan in Sunday’s final, Worsham rocketed past the Don Schumacher Racing driver to pick up his first win of the year and 39th of his career. The defending Funny Car world champ ran a 3.908 at 327.27 mph in the final while Hagan, a two-time winner this season, lost traction just past the 200-foot mark.

Ironically, it was exactly how Worsham lost the day prior as his car went up in smoke in the Seattle final against Ron Capps. And it was that tire-smoking run on Saturday that may have given way to Worsham’s breakthrough win.

“I felt pretty confident going into yesterday. The car was running well, we had those great qualifying runs and then to have it go out and smoke the tires like it did, it was definitely a wakeup call,” Worsham said. “We were all concerned, but we kind of blew it off due to some other circumstance. When we went out in Q4 and did the same crap again, I thought it’s going to help us in the end. We did a different job tuning, we went in a different direction, and it worked out.”

Worsham began eliminations from the second spot on the ladder in the DHL Toyota Camry looking to make his first career final at the Minnesota-based track. Despite earning his first-ever No. 1 at Brainerd way back in 1991, he had never visited a final at the facility in six previous semi-final tries.

“Brainerd is a pretty special place for me. Going all the way back to 1991, I have always wanted to win this race,” Worsham said. “My first-ever number one qualifier in Funny Car came here 25 years ago, so to finally get a win here is special. I damn near won this race in 2000 and John Force picked me off on a big holeshot in the semifinal.

“I’m glad to get the monkey off our back, get a win, go to Indy and start this NHRA Mello Yello Countdown.”

After losing traction and smoking the tires in both of his passes on Saturday, including in the make-up final against Capps in Q3, three of Worsham’s four opponents on Sunday lost in similar fashion. Hagan, Bob Bode and semifinal opponent Courtney Force all lost traction during their runs, while Tim Wilkerson in round two went red against the defending champ.

That string of luck, plus four solid passes of his own, allowed Worsham to finally visit his first winner’s circle of the season.

“The track giveth and the track taketh away,” Worsham said with a laugh. “I feel for Hagan. We came in here with a lot of confidence thinking we were going to do well. We had the final round coming up, Friday couldn’t have gone any better, our car was just making great runs and along came Saturday in the final and the thing just smokes the tires at the starting line.

“The entire team, Jon (Oberhofer) and Nicky (Boninfante) had to make some decisions, make some changes, along with Tommy (DeLago) and Jim (Oberhofer), they all came together for today.”

With the win, Worsham improves from fourth to third in the standings and will take that momentum into the final race before the Countdown to the Championship cutoff. Last year Worsham didn’t win his first race until the start of the Countdown en route to claiming the title, so a win going into the playoffs definitely doesn’t hurt according to the champ.

“I think, obviously, we are running better. We’ve won a race, we are higher in points, so, yeah, I do feel like we are ahead of the game,” Worsham said. “We are going to go back, regroup and get ready after all these races in a row and prepare ourselves for Indianapolis and the Countdown.”

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